Guidelines to healthy, successful fasting
When looking for a weight loss program, you might have run across fasting and thought, “That looks too easy, there must be a catch.” Or it might look too hard. Maybe you think only disordered people would chose to eat less frequently. Think again.
To be frank, fasting with the right guidelines is perfectly healthy and can be a huge help in losing and/or maintaining weight.
Fasting’s basic guideline: No calories!
There’s not much beyond that - stop eating for approximately 24 hours. this is different from “don’t eat all day”. That would mean skipping all meals during breakfast, lunch, dinner, and evening snack. Your schedule will be 24 hours exclusively without calories. You could not eat between lunchtime to lunch the next day, or dinner to dinner. Notice that there is not a ‘day without eating’. You aren’t waking up AND going to sleep hungry, ever. Once a week to start, possibly twice, and you’ll be on the road to weight loss.
My way of fasting is an evening meal around 8, then ignoring food until 8 the next day. I like my late night snacks, and this way I’m not craving a snack. I let myself sleep an extra half hour on fast days, rushing my schedule to exclude breakfast. Plan to be busy during your normal lunch time and get something else done instead of eating. steer clear of snacks until supper, and I’m done with my fast.
There are some tricks to help the fast I find some of these tips help.
Gum can get you through the first few fasts Getting something to chew is very satisfying.
Please drink lots of water. Add no-calorie flavor packets if you must. If you’re craving flavor, diet sodas can be consumed as well. Tea has no calories! Pick up a flavorful tea that you can enjoy without flavor. Your mouth’s urge for stimulation can be a major source of ‘hunger’.
Be busy! Errands on lunch break, a longer then usual to-do list. Focus on your tasks, not your hunger. The skill of focusing on what you’re doing without being distracted can be huge in fasting and other areas of your life. We’re trained to eat whenever we think we’re hungry. Nearly always, we don’t actually need food, we just are used to having it. If you’re carrying extra weight, you’ve eaten more calories then you ‘needed’ - so maybe you don’t need to listen to what your hunger ‘needs’ quite as strictly.
Denying the urge to eat can show us just how often we have those urges - because you will notice. The urge to eat came up SO often when I started intermittently fasting. The cravings grew less urgent after a while though. AND that discipline stuck with during the rest of my week as well.
There are more fasting guidelines online, I recommend Brad Pilon’s website and product. He has the details and documentation to support this way of fasting to burn fat. You can find information about other styles of fasting for weight loss - the warrior diet, juice fasting - but I think intermittent fasting, like this, to be less obtrusive into everyday life. Five of seven days, you eat exactly as you’d like. I recommend giving this a try - it’s only one day - this will NOT trigger anorexia or starving. Thanks!
